Manage GAFE Units of Learning with a Hyperdoc

For several years I’ve managed my Technology for Teachers course in units of learning to coincide with a 16-week and 8-week (summer) semester schedule. Google Drive makes this simple with Drive folders – inside each folder is every link, image, and needful content. As I gather all the resources, I create hyperdocs to upload to the college’s LMS platform. Once that’s done, I have all the necessary components for a unit laid in a weekly format so my students simply read and click on outside resources I’ve linked. My preferred method is to break up units into weeks. For example, if a unit has several weeks of activities, I create hyperdocs that are titled “Unit 1.1,” “Unit 1.2,” etc. and then link it in the LMS so that it’s one click to find all available content for that particular week.

Hyperdocs streamline gathering and delivering multiple correlated content sets to the student audience. The author can use the provided shareable link so that only the domain users can view or the .doc can be converted to a .pdf to reduce clicks to other resources. You can learn extensively about hyperdocs and get free templates with this useful HyperDoc Handbook at Amazon.

Here’s an example of a PD hyperdoc I created for teachers recently. After gathering resources and making links on the file, I simply made certain the sharing privilege was “Anyone with the link can view” for the file and then sent the link out. This is also a terrific method for presentations because the audience doesn’t have to take notes unless they prefer; they know they can access the information once the link is made available to them and they can hit the file whenever they need it. Google Docs also allows commenting and I often annotate any particular item that I want to emphasize – it could be directions or expectations I have for students to follow.

You can find all sorts of resources about hyperdocs. Here’s a great one at Pinterest: Hyperdoc Web Tools